No matter how much forward momentum or fresh creative energy an artist has, sometimes it’s important to look back and remember just how far you’ve come, and just how many people supported you along the way.
And if that opportunity comes from the state’s biggest film festival and an anniversary marking your first major award, well that’s even better.
That’ll be the unique experience of brothers Jacob and Zach Burns on June 14th, when they present their 2016 award-winner “Electric Nostalgia” at this year’s deadCenter Film Festival, ten years after the OKC-shot sci-fi thriller made its debut at the fest and walked off with the Best Oklahoma Feature Award.
As Jacob explains, it was actually deadCenter that reached out to their Planet Thunder Productions – the film company the brothers run with their friend Vinnie Hogan – and offered them this chance unexpectedly.
Jacob Burns: deadCenter reached out and basically brought it up themselves. They said, "Hey, are you guys planning to do anything special for the 10-year anniversary for “Electronic Nostalgia?” We'd like to be involved.” And we said, "Oh, well, yeah, let's do that!”
Zach Burns: Yeah that sounds great to us.
Jacob Burns: So it just kind of worked out, just serendipity. Like, they were excited to do it and we needed something to do, and wanted to do something big and cool for it. So it just worked out.
Brett Fieldcamp: “Electric Nostalgia” is a heavy film, a bleak black-and-white look into a near-future world of robots and spiraling tech that allows for the dead to be brought back in new bodies, an experience that leaves a woman distraught and haunted by memories and dreams that might not be her own.
It’s the kind of high-concept swing that a lot of young first-time feature directors would be too scared to take, and one that might’ve felt, at the time, to be outside the expectations of Oklahoma before the local filmmaking industry began bursting to bigger life.
But the brothers say it grew gradually from a desire to dig at something more heady and more profound, and from a desire for robots.
Jacob Burns: I was doing a lot of reading back then, particularly of Isaac Asimov and Philip K. Dick, and a lot of those science-fiction writers, and was really intrigued by the psychological element and the character perspective.
So it just kind of, it wasn't an “aha” moment late one night. It was definitely something that developed over a long period of time, and eventually became what it is now.
Zach Burns: Yeah, because I think we had several ideas floating around for stuff with robots.
Jacob Burns: Yeah, like whatever we're doing is gonna have robots!
Brett Fieldcamp: While the making of “Electric Nostalgia” and the local acclaim that it brought to Plant Thunder proved that they could produce something resonant and proved that Jacob could be a directorial force in the local scene, it also had a profound effect on Zach’s own ambitions, and at the upcoming anniversary screening, he’ll also be celebrating the moment that he decided to step up into the director’s role as well.
Zach Burns: I definitely came at this more from just being a producer, but then really, once we started making “Electric Nostalgia,” because we'd never made anything anywhere near that big before, pulling in that many other people, needing locations other than ones that was our mom's house, you know, like this was such, just such a bigger project, it was like “oh, this is a real movie that we're making right now,” and just going through that entire process, I was like “yeah, I think this is something I really want to do. I also want to do this, I want to make movies.”
It was a big moment
Brett Fieldcamp: Since the premiere and the big win for “Electric Nostalgia” a decade ago, the brothers have stayed busy with more features, shorts, documentaries, and numerous production and collaboration gigs behind the scenes.
They both admit they’ve been so busy, in fact, that they haven’t actually watched or fully appreciated their first feature in years.
Jacob Burns: I did watch the opening sequence again, which I hadn't watched in a long time, and I was like, you know, I've grown quite a bit in these 10 years as a filmmaker and as a person, but I was very proud of 10 year younger us. It is a representation of a different version of me.
Zach Burns: Yeah, that's what's really exciting for me, because, like, I have not seen this movie in several years. It's going to be really cool just watching the movie again, and with fresh eyes, and being like “oh, wow, this movie is kind of cool,” you know. Hopefully.
Brett Fieldcamp: But while some in the deadCenter audience will be experiencing the film for the first time, and many others will be reminiscing about the debut screening ten years ago, when a sold-out festival crowd saw the brothers surprised with the Best Oklahoma feature award, Jacob and Zach say that at the anniversary screening, they’ll be remembering the friends and community that went into the making, and the appreciation they have for the state’s biggest film fest believing in them for so many years.
Zach Burns: Just thinking back on making it, it really felt, at least in our small pocket of Oklahoma City filmmaking, it really felt like a lot of the community came out to help us.
Jacob Burns: Absolutely. The fact that we kind of put ourselves out there and people saw what we were doing and were excited and came together to help bring it to life, like, it's just mind blowing.
Zach Burns: deadCenter has meant a lot to us over the years as filmmakers, and so it really means a lot that deadCenter would invite us back with this movie.\
Jacob Burns: Yeah.
Brett Fieldcamp: “Electric Nostalgia” screens in a special 10th anniversary celebration as part of the deadCenter Sunday, June 14th at Harkins Theatres in Oklahoma City.
For more, visit deadcenterfilm.org.
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